Development of eco-friendly chitosan-g-polyacrylamide preformed particle gel for conformance control in high-temperature and high-salinity reservoirs

Abstract

Oil and gas extraction has become challenging nowadays due to the accompanying amount of excess produced water that results in poor recoverability of hydrocarbon, besides other environmental and economic isues. A recent and efficient technology for conformance control is the injection of preformed particle gels (PPGs), which results in a more practical production process. Nevertheless, existing treatments fail in high-temperature reservoirs, are extremely sensitive to salinity, and are hazardous. The characteristics of the designed PPG, such as mechanical strength and thermal durability, is mainly depend on their crosslinking method. Polysaccharides-based gels prepared by physical crosslinking are weaker than the ones crosslinked by strong covalent bonding. This paper uses one of the polysaccharides and proposes an environmentally friendly PPG for water shutoff applications in reservoirs of high temperature (≤130 °C) and high salinity (200,000 ppm), named chitosan grafted polyacrylamide crosslinked with N, N′-methylene bisacrylamide, synthesized chemically by microwave assisted method. The PPG's chemical compositions, grafting and crosslinking mechanism have been investigated by FTIR spectroscopy and SEM techniques. Swelling kinetics, swelling capacity, and mechanical strength measurements were conducted in different conditions to evaluate the influence of the reservoir conditions, such as salinity, temperature, and pH, on the PPG stability. TGA experiments were also performed to examine the thermal stability. Results have shown that the grafting method has produced a PPG with improved mechanical strength, thermal durability, and salt insensitivity. These results are consistent with the testing observations, where the swelling capacities and the storage modulusof Cs/PAMBA samples, with different MBA content, in deionized water were 2.72–11.64 g/g and 4272.1–22,687 Pa, respectively, while they are 2.52–13.82 g/g and 3699.6–22,910, respectively, in saline solution of TDS 67.2976 g/L. The PPGs are thermally stable and resist temperatures up to 130 °C. Besides being eco-friendly, the Cs/PAMBA showed good long-term thermal stability in high-temperature and high-salinity environments.